He reversed, only hitting the kerb once. As he drove past the red-brick building with the creaking enamel sign, he realized he couldn’t see the broken metal grille. It was halfway down the stairs and completely out of sight from the road. Yet Shelby said he had spotted it from his car. It vaguely worried him, but there was probably a logical explanation which could wait, whereas the party couldn’t. The dull boom of the disco belting out full blast from the station canteen was waiting to meet him as he turned into Market Square.

She was nervous. The moon, a diamond-hard white disc in the starless sky, made the path as bright as day but buried the bushes in deep shadow. She had an uneasy, nagging feeling of danger. Of someone lurking. She felt in her pocket, and her hand closed reassuringly over the nail file. Not much of a weapon, but just let anyone try anything and she’d use it like a knife.

But she didn’t have a chance to use it. He was too quick for her. A slight rustling noise from behind her, and, even as she was turning, the cloth blacked out the moon, the stars. She opened her mouth to scream, but choking hands squeezed and squeezed.

Inside her head she was screaming, loudly, deafeningly. But only she could hear.

Tuesday night shift (2)

Police Sergeant Bill Wells, sad-faced and balding, raised his head to the ceiling where all the noise was coming from and bared his teeth in anger. Upstairs, that was where he should be. Up there, enjoying himself, instead of being stuck down here as station sergeant, trying to cope with the running of the district with hopelessly inadequate numbers of staff.

He was one of the few members of the Denton Division forced to be on duty on this special night, the night of the big party. And what was unfair was that he should have been up there. Today should have been his day off. But at the very last minute, for his own peculiar reasons, the Divisional Commander had revised the duty roster, so now Wells was on duty, as was Jack Frost. This didn’t worry Jack Frost, as he intended to sneak upstairs whatever the rosters said. You could get away with it in plainclothes but not if, like Sergeant Wells, you were wearing a uniform. There was no justice.